The present invention relates to a saving device for image sharing, such as an image sharing server, as well as an image sharing system and an image sharing method for classifying, saving, and sharing among a plurality of users the image data on a plurality of images offered by the sharer thereof, for instance, images uploaded to a server on a network, and more specifically to a saving device for image sharing such as an image sharing server, an image sharing system, and an image sharing method capable of automatically classifying a group of images associated with a subject from a large-volume image group offered by the sharer thereof, for instance, a large-volume image group uploaded to a server on a network, and sharing the image data among a plurality of users depending on their personal preference.
In recent years, there have been proposed various image sharing systems configured to share among a plurality of users image data uploaded to a server or the like on a network by a user. Among such systems, there have been proposed systems configured to share images by extracting images of each user or images associated with each user from a plurality of uploaded image data, and transmitting or enabling browsing of image data that satisfies specific conditions on a per user basis.
For example, in the information providing device and information providing method described in JP 2007-310730 A, a plurality of users accumulate data browseable via a network and make such data available to other users. In JP 2007-310730 A, a user (image owner) uploads images to a photo site on a network, manages the images in an album, and makes the images available for browsing to other specific users in accordance with their browsing requests. Further, JP 2007-310730 A makes it possible to establish access restrictions, thereby making it possible to prevent a significant increase in device load when access is temporarily concentrated at the time the specific users are prompted to browse the data. In addition, it is described in JP 2007-310730 A that image sharing is carried out by informing the users permitted by the owner to browse, by e-mail and the like from a photo site, of the URLs of the destinations where digital images are stored.
In JP 2007-272719 A, it is described that the photographic processing apparatuses provided in different shops and networked with one another notify one another of registered information including the name (ID) of a taken-image file and shop information (position information (IP address) of a photographic processing apparatus on a network) as well as thumbnail images through a network, and a peer-to-peer transfer of a taken-image file is carried out from one photographic processing apparatus to another, based on the registered information, so as to acquire the taken-image file.